27 Nov 2012

OT Quote of the Day

Kindergarten boy: Tie my shoes!

OT: What’s the magic word?

Kindergarten boy: iPad?

AAHAHAHAHAA

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

26 Nov 2012

Duct tape your eyeballs into your head, quick.

If you ever see TL;DR it stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read” and usually people who realize they have written WAY TOO MUCH will write that and then summarize. Except they usually summarize at the bottom. I’ll summarize at the top for those of you who have sensitive eyeballs.

TL; DR: I’m figuring out how to transition my blog, I have a new website rolling out very soon, and I’m rambling to myself. The End.

=============

I haven’t actually written much on this blog in a while, but I’ve had a lot “scheduled” so it looks like I have. I do, however, think of it constantly, because to me, learning is wasted when not shared. When I learn something cool (and I do, every single day, somehow), my first thought is how to share it. So that others can learn, or benefit, or make it better, or give feedback, or whatever.

Blogging definitely requires at least a TOUCH of narcissism if not a lot, but I also think that (depending on your blog type) it requires a lot of generosity. I know my blog is often nothing but a rambly stream of consciousness, and I do have a monthly crisis over that fact, but I’m also not making a dime off of it. Sometimes I use it for my own therapeutic self-reflection but often I do spend a lot of time writing stuff up for the purpose of others benefitting. It’s now been 1,800 posts and almost six years later. I currently get around 12,000 page views a month, have had close to 350,000 page views now, and I’m in a transition mode for this blog. As many of you may know it started as otstudents.blogspot.com (which made sense in 2006-2009) as a student, lol. It did not make sense after that. 🙂 But I recently started calling it Days of Our OT Lives and switched it to blog.missawesomeness.com, although I bought the domain name www.missawesomeness.com so if you go there, it links to it as well. Any of those three methods work.

So ANYWAY. I recently worked with a great website developer, Lawrence, who helped turn Miss Awesomeness into a real website, although I have yet to see the great unveiling – hopefully this week? When that happens I’ll give you a heads-up so you can check it out, please (those of you on RSS feeds)! It should be pretty. 🙂 But really it will still just be my blog for now, with a lot of categories for things I’d like to add or am working on. One thing someone suggested I do and I REALLY NEED TO is to put labels on posts.

I also started reading a book (I just wrote bog instead…), on blogging which had some great tips, none of which I am currently utilizing in this post, such as being concise and using bullet points, haha. But it gave me some good food for thought that I will be exploring further when my brain isn’t quite so tired. It’s 945pm – I’m going to bed at 10pm for sures. But things that just make sense. Many of you who have followed me for most of the last six years have gotten used to my um…wackiness. But I’m probably not very attractive to the random person who finds me on Pinterest. 🙂 (www.pinterest.com/funkist)

To some extent, I don’t care enough, meaning that I only have so much time and energy to devote to making this blog for others versus myself. But since I do eventually want to have Miss Awesomeness be a force, I guess I do need to start the process of catering to a larger OT audience that doesn’t like their eyeballs falling out every time they read my posts. What can I say. Well actually. I can say a lot. AHAHAHAAHA

The point is…well the point is I am kind of thinking out loud. Being transparent. 😉 Apparently being transparent is a good strategy for many, and all I can say is this blog is made out of saran wrap, cuz y’all have definitely watched the OT process from student to practitioner which is not always perfectly smooth. 🙂

So I’m working on getting Miss Awesomeness more established, while trying to keep on top of my “day job” (cough and night job cough) and personal life. Trying to balance my occupations (remember that occupations are not just JOBS but our meaningful daily activities).

By the way, when you fill out forms as an OT and it says Occupation: do you ever want to just like, write in ..al Therapist” instead of having to rewrite occupation? No? Just curious. Not that I ever have…. 😡

The original reason I popped onto Blogger tonight was to respond to some comments and check on my stats but also because I actually wanted to write a little about gifts/strengths/talents. I’ve lately really come a long way in being kinder to myself. I no longer (as often) agonize over my weaknesses and what I am NOT doing, like feeding the homeless. Instead I try to embrace my strengths and what I AM doing, like holding drug-addicted babies at the hospital. I don’t tell myself (as often) that I’m weird in a bad way for needing things like socks on my feet at night in bed. I just understand it’s part of who I am and what I need, that I am lucky to know what I need and have the resources to meet my needs, and that I should move on and focus on bigger fish to fry. 🙂 That is kind of a ludicrous example but still a true one for me. We are all our harshest critics! If we could only treat ourselves as kindly as we treat others.

A few other things I want to address soon or in more detail..

1. therapeutic sense of self/our gifts

2. road rage

3. OT in everything/the OT filter

4. teaching advocacy

5. empowerment (i cant help that its my favorite topic of the year)

6. new website

Well I know I also shortly need to review some awesome shoelaces I recently got from http://www.tyingisasnap.com/ as well as two contributor articles – one from a WebPT lady and one about writing your graduate school essay. And I can’t remember what else right now but that’s why I have 200+ new emails in my Gmail box, right? 🙂 It’s officially 10:00pm so I said I would go to bed. I’m so tired that I’m dreading this week ahead, my brain is so fuzzy. Unfortunately I have a lot of sleep problems and so there is literally zero percent I will wake up in the morning refreshed and ready to face the week. But I can try, because some sleep is better than no sleep.

Good night….

If anyone reads this and wants to comment…..would love to hear what’s on your mind in OT land as we face the holidays, and/or anything you’d like to see covered that can not be answered by a simple google search….if in doubt, ask anyway. 😉 I’m going to try to do a better job of responding to comments as one of my new goals!

PS: Good job Cheryl of the blog OT Notes on learning to just let it out!! 🙂

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1

24 Nov 2012

I've been in healthcare too long…

I’ve been in OT too long. I read this warning “May cause excessive leg circling” and was like WHAT KIND OF NEUROLOGICAL SIDE EFFECT IS THIS?!!! (ie the leg itself moving in circles). Turns out, of course, it meant the cat moving around your leg happily. Whoopsiedoodles 🙂

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 2

22 Nov 2012

Official Miss Awesomeness Club Member

These were sooo cute. One of the instructional assistants made them for my birthday 🙂 Some of my OT kiddos were wearing them….I saved a few! Two are going in boxes going out to Cheryl (for winning the Miss Awesomeness toy giveaway) and Tonya (TherapyFunZone.com, because she has sent me several things so I owe her!!) 🙂

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

20 Nov 2012

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1

20 Nov 2012

MONKEYS!!

I’ve been meaning to post this monkey video for a while now on Youtube so I can show some of my OT kiddos!! 🙂

PS: What kind of key can’t open a door? A monkey 🙂 (One of my favorite cartoons shows that joke being told, then the next panel shows a monkey bursting through the door shouting LIES!!!) It makes me laugh….

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 2

20 Nov 2012

Weighted sea urchin :)

So I’m a weirdo.
I put a bunch of fishing weights into a weird shell thing my mom saved for me (clickety clack). Then I wrapped a modern art rubber band around it to keep it in intact. Then I put it into a piece of pantyhose to make it more itact. Then I wrapped a PlayVisions hyperflex toy around it to make a nice weighted sea urchin, lol. In hindsight putting it on a weighted ball would have been easier, but weighted balls are expensive and this was all stuff I had literally within arms reach at that moment (I was organizing toys this weekend).

I think kids will like my weighted sea urchin. It’s probably something I’ll hand them when I pick them up in their classroom, to hold while we walk back to my room, if I am doing pull-out service. Today I didn’t have any good fidgets for a kid with weak hands who has kind of a long walk, but I had a piece of reject Theratubing (ie like a 6 inch scrap piece from when I miscalculated) that he was happy to tug on while we walked and chatted.

And PS: yes, I know push-in service is best, and I do it as often as I can, but scheduling is a HUGE factor.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

20 Nov 2012

Mr Frost: Melting Snowman: Great OT toy

My OT helper Kelly (getting observation hours for OT school) found this at Nordstrom Rack for like ten dollars, which is expensive but frankly worth it yo! It’s essentially white theraputty and some accessories. You have to copy the picture and add in the accessories as shown at the beginning of the session (as a very quick eye/hand warm-up and fun activity) then put it aside and show the kid at the end how it melted! 🙂 I think for our California kiddos who never see snow, it’s especially cool!

I think I need to do this with my green theraputty, but alien style 🙂

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 2

18 Nov 2012

SPED Acronym Halloween costume :)

One of my schools special ed team team dressed up as SPED-based acronyms for Halloween..

DRA = some reading assessment
FAPE = free and appropriate public education
PT = physical therapist
SLP – speech language pathologist
IEP – individualized educational plan/program
ESY =extended school year

In hindsight…WHERE IS OT?!!!! OMG…

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

16 Nov 2012

love

I'm too tired right now to want to write a long post about my day, which is unfortunate because i know the details will slip away quickly if I don't. But basically I wanted to say today that pretty much every day, there are magical moments and/or moments where my OT children enchant me. 🙂 They'll say something, or do something, or show me something, or surprise me, or who knows what – all I know is, even though I have plenty of stressful moments and overwhelming moments, my OT kids are all gifts with a lot to teach us. And I don't mean that in the Lifetime movie way so stop gagging. They just rock, that's all. 🙂

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

Pin My OT Ideas on Pinterest